hurts the soul like apathy
by The Musings of a Muse
Summary: Lucy is dead. And Natsu doesn't care.


** I don't know what this is. I really don't. You all can blame it on the new opening and ending of Fairy Tail 176, if you like. **

** I'm confused with this. I don't really know what this is (I think I said that already) but if you'd like to hear my explanation of what this might be, PM me and I'll do my best to explain.**

** ...read at your own risk?**

** I don't own Fairy Tail.**

**~MM~**

He doesn't care that she's dead.

He knows that it sounds horrible. It sounded horrible when everything had gone to Hell in a hand-basket with the Grand Magic Games and Lucy had not come back. Natsu had felt nothing but a hollow kind of acceptance. There hadn't been anger, hadn't been the red-soaked vision-rage that he normally got. There was no need to look, no want to know what had happened, no inkling that anything out of what was ordinary had happened; no, it was as if a part of him curled over on its heels, pressed its palms into its eyes and started rubbing at the tears that hadn't even formed yet, trying to stem the pain because that part of him knew it was going to happen, and it had, and that was the only part of him allowed to care and grieve and mourn.

(Logically, objectively, he knew that her not coming back meant that she was dead. She was dead. In a better place. Six feet under. Etcetera, etcetera.

Dead, he knew, objectively, logically, meant she was gone for good. Gone as gone. Dead as dead.

Subjectively, irrationally: he didn't care.)

It hadn't sounded good when he'd finally admitted it to himself, shaking and wheezing, strangely OK with his lack of reaction (after all, he still felt dead – no pun intended - to the prospect, like it was an old wound already closed, and now it was only the shock – because_ what is he thinking_ – that's making him tremble with self-hate).

It hadn't sounded good when he got drunk later that night, muttering it to himself over and over again on the edge of a bar stool in a bar that was not Fairy Tail's. (He wouldn't subject the rest of the guild to his problem – denial – issue – aberration – horror – apathy; he didn't want to deal with their accusations either.)

Nor had it sounded at all acceptable when he said it the next morning, a massive hangover throbbing behind his eyes (which, for a minute, he mistook as tears and nearly thought himself to be a decent human being again before he puked and realized it was really those damn vodka shots he had the night before).

It didn't sound better the morning after that. Or after that. Or after that. Not a week later. A month later. And certainly not this particular morning when he woke up.

(He woke up from a nightmare where Lucy is dead and he doesn't care. Never cared. He **never** cared. She was just there; there and there and there and never leaving his side – and then gone. The person in his dream didn't care. There were no tears, no hangovers; no all-nighters, no drive-to-distraction missions. There was nothing but a monotone "She is?" When told that Lucy – his best friend, partner, more-fun-when-they're-together, save-the-tears-for-when-they-win, forgiving, cry-during-animated-movies, get-depressed-over-fictional-characters, loving _Lucy of Fairy Tail_ [not Heartfilia; she hadn't been a Heartfilia since July 7; day of fate and coincidence and death and renewal and despair] - was dead.)

(She is? His mind says. Ah. She _**is**_. She's been dead a long time.)

So he wakes up, and looks at his ceiling, away from the artifacts of an old life – "The first mission I performed with Lucy!" – to the slats of wood above his head that don't touch and let the world in from the sky.

It's dusk, he thinks, dusk or dawn and somewhere between night and day and rising and setting and dying, dying, dying.

Lucky Lucy, Lucy Heartfilia, Lucy of Fairy Tail is dead.

She is dead.

And Natsu does not care.

Oddly enough, he doesn't notice that no one else does either. But it feels so _wrong_, Lucy being alive and not dead and he knows that she is dead, knows because he watched her get run through with that future bastard's sword; get screwed over by time and people playing God.

(Time screws everyone, she sleeps around, but she was always jealous of Lucy because she never did and she was more beautiful than Time and Time could not stand it - so Lucy was killed in Time, by Time, to save Time; literally, metaphorically.)

He watched her bleed out, paint herself on the cobblestones and grasp at her other self's hands, the present one––

The...present...one...?

(Two Lucys? No. Not possible. There is only one Lucy; one Lucy he did not protect and never cared about. One where he does not care about her death or life or anything in-between.)

Lucy is dead.

(His Lucy is dead, he allows himself to think, and there's some sort of emotion tied to that and he finds that...that...what is it?)

Lucy is dead in the future and the past and the present and, for whatever reason deigned by the higher powers, Natsu does not care.

Lucy is dead. Perhaps Natsu is even glad.

(Because that means that when she comes back – where had she been? The moon had been covering the sun and it'd been too dark to see, and she'd let go of his hand until he grabbed her off the ground again when the moon moved past – when she comes back, Natsu is able to remember and smile and care and care and care because Lucy is dead.

Lucy is dead in that future, and Natsu doesn't care.)

(Truth be told, he's dead too.)

**~MM~**

** ...yeah. So. Um. Tell me what a horrible person I am? Leave your interpretations?**

** Yeah. Leave a review. I'm going to go hide now.**

** R&R. Or, yell at me. That works too.**


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